A funereal pall hangs over most of New York on this bright mid-November morning. All is eerily quiet on the western front. The streets have been cleared of the electorally vanquished. The protocol of liberal grandees has disappeared into their suburban dens. But the victors are in a triumphant procession. It is a strange victory indeed. The odd, doleful and lugubrious Black vagrant could be seen occasionally punching the air in a gesture of defiance while spurting some insensate nonsense. Donald Trump, the grandson of a drafter dodger expelled from the Bavarian principality, carries all before him.
Not even his greatest and most implacable political adversary could doubt the scale and scope of the electoral disaster the anti-democratic heathen and convicted felon has inflicted on the Democratic Party and various armchair critics—yours sincerely included— the world over. It has taken a serially and severely flawed person to bring out the worst about America and to remind us once again that democracy is about numbers and not about wishful thinking or romantic exhortations.
The oligarchy of self-interest trumps all when it comes to modern liberal democracy. When self-interests conspire to gain ascendancy, all other interests, including national interest, must take a back seat. America has taken a look at its own inner demons and recoiled in horror and terror. The time for expansive nobility will come in the fullness of time, but not this time around. The stakes are just too high for any sentimental twaddle. The time for the generosity of spirit which facilitates equality of outlook will soon arrive once again but not this time around. The economic outlook is just too bleak for that kind of suicidal high-mindedness. Self-preservation is the first law of nature.
And so they all voted for Trump in droves and high number while shrugging it all away in the privacy of solitude as a small price to pay for survival in a harsh environment deliberately created by Trump and other economic confederates. One bird does not have the luxury of informing the other bird about a fast approaching pellet. And so they all voted for Trump in droves and in the conspiracy of privacy which later became damning and shaming public knowledge. It is not a thing to be proud of and that it is why the jubilation has been muted in many circles. But as Catch-22 has famously taught them, one’s concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers real and immediate is the product of a rational mind.
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Black people fearing the prospects and possibility of economic extinction above all other mortal fears; clergy people who dreaded the possibility fiscal annihilation more than the prospects of Trump’s moral infamy; women who believed more in presidential macho and machismo than in the feminized wiles and charms of a female president of the greatest military power the world has seen; Black men who simply abjured the possibility of a Black woman as commander in chief and of course the teeming mass of urban and suburban White males who simply pooh-poohed the idea of a woman, and a Black woman for that matter, as the president of the United States of America. By the time they all came together in a granite composite of contraries and contradictions, it was all too much for poor Kamila who fled from public view as the evidence of rejection and comprehensive shellacking began to mount on that historic night.
America has once again shown the world how historical momentums are made and lost. It will take quite some time before it came together like this one once again. It has happened once, when the brilliant and magical Barack Obama broke all the barriers of race and religion and shattered the glass ceiling of colour and creed to emerge as president of the United States. Hilary Clinton almost completed the race, having won the electoral majority only to be thwarted at the Electoral College. But that is probably why they are having this implacable and ferocious backlash in America. Once bitten and twice about to be stung, no dice.
America has taken a bad beat from its own inner demons. Democracy and its finer ideals and capacity to produce men and women who are driven by the visionary ideal of a more humane and better organized society have receded to their lowest ebb. It will take time to recoup and regroup. It will take energy, drive and superhuman will. It is too early to write off this nation of sturdy immigrants. Trump and his cohorts will make this possible. This is why there is a ring of historical inevitability about the coming of this particular fellow and the return of the shining city on the hills. Uncle Sam will be back.